"But he ought also to admit that he may be wrong."
"What is your opinion, master?" asked the doctor.
"Yes, your opinion?" said Billet.
"You have been trying the accused over again, but you should test the sentence. Had you doomed the king, you would have been right. You doomed the man, and you were wrong."
"I don't understand," said Billet.
"You ought to have slain the king amid his guards and courtiers, while unknown to the people—when he was to them a tyrant. But, after having let him live and dwell under the eyes of the private soldier, the petty civil servant, the workman, as a man, this sham abasement elevated him, and he ought to have been banished or locked up, as happens to any man."
"I did not understand you," said Billet to the doctor, "but I do the Citizen Cagliostro."
"Just think of their five months' captivity molding this lump—who was born to be a parish beadle—into a statue of courage, patience, and resignation, on a pedestal of sorrow; you sanctified him so that his wife adored him. Who would have dreamed, my dear Gilbert," said the magician, bursting into laughter, "that Marie Antoinette would ever have loved her mate?"
"Oh, if I had only guessed this," muttered Billet, "I would have slain him before! I could have done it easily."
These words were spoken with such intense patriotism that Gilbert pardoned them, while Cagliostro admired.